Running Helia with ts-node

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Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• About The Project
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation and Running example
• Usage
  • Putting it all together
• Documentation
• Contributing
• Want to hack on IPFS?

About The Project

• Read the docs
• Look into other examples to learn how to spawn a Helia node in Node.js and in the Browser
• Visit https://dweb-primer.ipfs.io to learn about IPFS and the concepts that underpin it
• Head over to https://proto.school to take interactive tutorials that cover core IPFS APIs
• Check out https://docs.ipfs.io for tips, how-tos and more
• See https://blog.ipfs.io for news and more
• Need help? Please ask 'How do I?' questions on https://discuss.ipfs.io

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure you have installed all of the following prerequisites on your development machine:

• Git - Download & Install Git. OSX and Linux machines typically have this already installed.
• Node.js - Download & Install Node.js and the npm package manager.

Installation and Running example

> npm install
> npm start

Usage

Note

Since Node 22 you can run .ts files directly with the --experimental-strip-types option (and --experimental-transform-types if enum support is required), and also require ESM modules that do not await promises at the top level so this tool is effectively no longer necessary.

ts-node is a TypeScript execution and REPL tool for running TypeScript files from the command line, similar to how you would run JavaScript files with node.js.

It gives the illusion of compilation-free code execution by using JIT compilation to turn your TypeScript code into JavaScript at runtime and is a useful development tool.

Because TypeScript outputs CommonJS by default, and Helia is written using more modern ECMAScript Modules it's necessary to override the default configuration ts-node uses.

Putting it all together

You can run ts code using ts-node:

> npx ts-node ./src/index.ts

Helia is running
PeerId: 12D3KooWMUv1MYSYrgsEg3ykfZ6nDZwaT72LtVCheRNhH15kzroz

That's it! You just ran an ESM-only module using ts-node with JIT compilation!

For more examples, please refer to the Documentation

Documentation

• IPFS Primer
• IPFS Docs
• Tutorials
• More examples
• API - Helia
• API - @helia/unixfs

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the IPFS Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -a -m 'feat: add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Want to hack on IPFS?

The IPFS implementation in JavaScript needs your help! There are a few things you can do right now to help out:

Read the Code of Conduct and JavaScript Contributing Guidelines.

• Check out existing issues The issue list has many that are marked as 'help wanted' or 'difficulty:easy' which make great starting points for development, many of which can be tackled with no prior IPFS knowledge
• Look at the Helia Roadmap This are the high priority items being worked on right now
• Perform code reviews More eyes will help a. speed the project along b. ensure quality, and c. reduce possible future bugs
• Add tests. There can never be enough tests